


Not Anywhere

by orphan_account



Series: Gap Year (oracle series spinoff) [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, BUT it ends well ish, Gen, M/M, alternating povs, im not sure about rating, mentioned past molliarty and mystrade, no underage stuff, offshoot/sequel of the magic school AU, this gets kinda sad??? compared to the other stories in this 'verse at least, touches on depression but vaguely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-03 08:21:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14564916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Mycroft Holmes is supposed to be some untouchable, all-seeing entity.But Jim is young and foolish and what good is a romance if it doesn't burn you up from the inside out and take the world with it?(can be read as a standalone)





	1. Chapter 1

No one really thinks about where Oracles come from.

 

Mycroft remembers being 10 and attending the Academy and taking the prerequisite trip up a mountain to see the Oracle like everyone else in his year, and thinking nothing more about the wizened old man who stared into his soul and offered a few cryptic and ominous words, beyond trying to parse the meaning of the words themselves.

 

 _“One day, you, too, will see all._ ”

 

A chill went down Mycroft’s spine and in retrospect the foreboding line was completely obvious, but his 10-year-old self completely refused to see it.

 

Fast-forward a dozen years and a 22-year-old Mycroft is graduating from university with honors and a promised position in the Ministry. His knack for processing vast amounts of information and deft understanding of politics made it so that it had sounded certain he would be dealing with international politics, and, more specifically, intelligence. This sure sounded like “seeing all” to him at the time, but when he was called in for what he thought was an orientation meeting and instead led into an antiquated classical-style chamber, a round room where the speaker stood in the center, Mycroft Holmes was confused. Caught off guard.

 

It hadn’t happened in so long he forgot the feeling, and it took several moments to recognize it.

 

“Your extraordinary abilities of Perception make you uniquely qualified for this position, Mr. Holmes,” said the man in the gold, wire-rimmed spectacles. Then, before a large audience of Ministry members, he continued with what sounded like a very practiced speech,

 

and nominated Mycroft to succeed the last Oracle.

 

As it turned out, the last one had passed away just the day before.

 

The man in the spectacles then turned to Mycroft, reciting a long and flourish-filled passage that asked if he would accept this nomination.

 

With hundreds of pairs of eyes boring into him, it was clear what answer they meant for him to give.

 

He was backed into a corner.

 

It wasn’t the type of request you say no to.

 

In retrospect, that “too” had been a dead giveaway.

 

But then, hindsight was always 20/20.

 

-

 

When Mycroft looks at people, he sees their pasts written all over them like ink on parchment, and their futures like wispy strands of smoke and web that ensnare the person like a mass of candy floss.

 

Others did, too, to some degree.

 

People would just have a feeling or hunch, or make a logical or statistical prediction, and a lot of these perceived methods came with some amount of accuracy.

 

But Mycroft, no, he was gifted.

 

He saw the hunches and the feelings and the logic and the statistics all rolled in together with a hefty dose of magical sight on top, and then he was bequeathed the gift of the oracle, or as good as such.

 

He hadn’t understood what it was earlier in life, nor when exactly the terms came to settle and put him on this path. In retrospect, this predictive power had indeed gotten stronger as he aged, but he hadn’t realized _just_ how different he was, until this.

 

Days after he is handed this post, Mycroft is given a week to settle his affairs.

 

It feels like enacting his last will and testament.

 

So Mycroft goes home with the intention of saying his goodbyes and collecting his things, but when he gets home, he finds there is almost nothing he wants to keep, and not much he wants to stay.

 

He takes just three photos from his childhood room, and collects a few more items before he leaves for his parents’ countryside vacation home. His clothes and day to day items are already in his dorm ready to be moved (originally meant to be moved into his new flat, near the Ministry center, but now, who knows?), but he caves the last minute and pockets his house key, though he would never need it again, and a pack of cigarettes that don’t belong to him.

 

At the vacation home, he arrives when everyone is out, and smiles through the irony of it.

 

Then he goes inside to sit and wait, but after entering through the backyard into the kitchen, he finds he can’t bring himself to go much further.

 

He’s probably lost an hour in thought, when his younger brother bursts into the kitchen, then freezes a step in from the door.

 

Sherlock yells for Mummy, and then Mycroft forces a smile onto his face.

 

His parents are back soon enough, and their first instinct in hearing his new and shiny appointment is to coddle, but then there is the knee-jerk reaction of distance, upon realizing they have no idea how to do so. They’ve never been the coddling type. Or the affectionate type. They’ve never known what to do with Mycroft.

 

It’s not a very productive week.

 

-

 

He sees Sherlock again soon enough.

 

Fall always means new students from the Academy trekking up the mountain for an audience with the Oracle, and only a sad few stand out.  

 

Mycroft makes plans to reside close by enough that the, “commute,” he refers to drily, isn't very tasking. The new school semester in session doesn't preclude him from continuing with his government work, however, and he is still on call at all hours to advise the Ministry’s select few on details of national importance.

 

Between the dignitaries and the schoolchildren, Mycroft’s not sure which group is more ridiculous.

 

He waits patiently that first week, knowing he will see his brother soon. When he spots John Watson, he knows he will see Sherlock next.

 

He manages to smile down at his brother, who only gives him a brooding look in return.

 

In every batch of a hundred or so, there might be two or three meant to accomplish something great, and Sherlock is one of them. Mycroft has always been certain of his brother’s potential, but an Oracle’s word is binding.

 

Like him, Sherlock is an extremely perceptive one as well, but unlike him, Sherlock’s sentimentality and sense of romance prevent him from otherwise accessing visions of the universe.

 

Mycroft is thinking of how to best convey this to his brother when he interrupts.

 

“What, save the world, get the girl, blah blah blah?” Sherlock asks.

 

That’s sounds about right, though admittedly Mycroft would have used more poetic, grandiose terminology.

 

“Yes,” he replies, a bit sad, a bit proud, that his baby brother is growing up. That this might be the last time in a long, long time he will ever see him again.

 

Sherlock stomps off, unhappy. But then, he’s been in a moody place these days anyway.

 

Mycroft’s fingers twitch, and he instinctively reaches for his cigarettes, before willing himself to hold off until he’s seen the rest of the students.

 

-

 

After those ten days, Mycroft spends nearly no time out of the year up in the mountain cave temple. He never gave this much thought as a little first year attending the biggest magic school.

 

What did Oracles do when no one called upon them?

 

Was the rest of the year a holiday? Did they sit and wait around? Brew up giant cauldrons of smokey potions, cut up livestock to read their entrails, or spend their day sipping tea?

 

No one likely gave it much thought. Not that it would have mattered, because there is scarcely a moment when Mycroft is not called upon.

 

After those ten days he packs immediately to move into a second residence close to the Embassy, where it turns out many of his meetings are. Occasionally there are many things to discuss in the Ministry’s Defense building, but that is just a stone’s throw away.

 

Then there are the very private meetings, between very important people, some in appropriately dim rooms lined with ancient runes and held up by massive classical columns—two such rooms, to be more exact, and everything there is always painstakingly formal and traditional, even the time, which, unfortunately, means syncing up meetings to the moon and planets rather than proper business hours.

 

There are also the less formal private meetings which take the guise of lunches and coffees and even take place in busy hotel restaurants and upscale cafes.

 

It is in these moments that Mycroft realizes how invisible he is to the real world. When people bustle on by pass him and the man sitting across from him is asking about the value of the Euro in five to seven years and what that should mean for the Ministry’s dealings with foreign sorcerers, and he makes every effort to not seem like he's been up since 3 a.m. because the moon called for it, looking into the fates and fortunes of the city as a circle of priests, if that's what they were, lit incense and chanted in the temple around him.

 

He lights another cigarette with a matchbook he’s pocketed from the various hotel bars he’s had meetings in and makes a mental note to purchase a lighter. His isolation is no doubt only more strictly enabled (enforced?) by the fact that there is a revolving door of Ministry-employed assistants and attendants and Mycroft does not so much purchase things as he does send for them. He wonders whether he should feel regretful or thankful that he rarely sees the same one twice, with the frankly startling amount of cigarettes he goes through.

 

Mycroft Holmes is gone. He exists in this space where he is not quite alive and not quite dead. He is not a real person. He's just the Oracle now.

 

-

 

“But how did the information get out?” asks the woman with the immaculate bun, codename Love, sitting at the head of the table.

 

“Perhaps a traitor?” replies a middle-aged man, codenamed Porlock, almost nonchalantly. “If not a leak.”

 

Mycroft stays in the far corner of the room, looking out the window, craving a cigarette. He won't join the meeting unless he’s asked a direct question. He finds things easier that way.

 

This happens when you've got the heads of various departments in the same room. They want to suss it out for themselves, then hear the Oracle tell them they were right all along.

 

“Pure accident insofar that an employee happened to bring her work home one night and acquired a tail,” Mycroft interjects, not looking at the group. “But I see that should the tail not be caught, things could go very badly for this project and we would find out far too late. He isn't quite loyal, you see, and knowing who the employer is won't help any.”

 

At least one of them purses their lips, feeling a bit put out. Mycroft doesn't need to even look in the window reflection to see that.

 

They would have asked about the repercussions in any case, but would have wanted another few minutes to debate who the traitor might have been.

 

But sometimes Mycroft has to keep up the negative predictions and visions no one asked for. It is his role to be appropriately ominous and foreboding after all.

 

-

 

A year of this, and Mycroft is absolutely looking forward to ten days at the Academy again. It'll be a near holiday.

 

Or so he thinks, until the first few students trickle in. Some are timid and some are over-zealous, and Mycroft tries to distance himself emotionally as much as possible. It's testy otherwise, being the one to deliver them their sealed fates.

 

Most of them will go on to do perfectly respectable, if ordinary, things. There will be accomplishments and failures, love and heartbreak, celebrations of life and mourning in death.

 

And Mycroft tells them as such.

 

Then on Thursday, three days into the new school year, a boy with eyes far too intense for his young age makes his way into the cave.

 

The lines of fate around him are a swirling mass of chaos. As much as Sherlock has potential for greatness, this one seems ready to hurl himself into the vortex in order to enable destruction.

 

It makes Mycroft take pause.

 

Even more curious, such chaotic leanings have nothing to do with this boy’s quest. He doesn't need to blow up the world, he would just prefer to.

 

And, unlike the others, and despite his clear eagerness to hear what's in store for him, he doesn't head straight for the Oracle.

 

No, instead he circles the room, fiddling with everything he can possibly get his hands on. And his first question is not about himself or Quests, but about Mycroft.

 

“Do you get bored here?” he asks.

 

Perhaps he's referring to the sparse furnishings.

 

Mycroft, annoyed at being called upon at the end of the day, at least an hour past when they were supposed to be done, ignores the intrusive question and continues to read his paper at his table with his cigarette.

 

He takes another drag.

 

The boy clears his throat.

 

“No,” Mycroft responds, glad he's not bound by some nonsense (besides oaths and honor and his very real but perhaps sometimes misplaced love for country) that prevents him from lying.

 

The boy doesn't look like he believes him, but then, Mycroft didn't try very hard.

 

“Jim Moriarty,” the boy says, sticking out his hand to shake. Most of the children don't do that.

 

Mycroft looks him up and down, reading the lines of fate and possibilities, and then sighs.

 

“Oh you're going to be trouble, aren't you?”

 

The boy, Jim, blinks and looks surprised.

 

“Maybe,” he says. “Aren't you supposed to tell me?”

 

“Here for your Quest then,” Mycroft says, a reprimand disguised as a question. “You're at least an hour late.”

 

“I'm _new,”_ he protests. “There was orientation and things.”

 

“You could have come tomorrow.”

 

“Well I'm here _now_.”

 

Jim stands his ground and Mycroft stares back. After a moment, the boy’s resolve falters; he looks as if he believes the Oracle might send him away anyway.

 

Mycroft bites back a sigh. He doesn't feel the need to be unnecessarily pedantic.

 

“Yes you are,” Mycroft says, straightening up a bit. He makes a show of contemplation despite the fact that students’ quests are actually quite plain and easy to find within the webs that make up their futures.

 

“And it seems there will be much in store for you despite your lack of timeliness,” Mycroft says, ignoring the narrowed eyes at his jibe. “Your Quest is this:”

 

“ _You will one day unearth a wonderful treasure.”_

 

Mycroft’s not being deliberately vague; that's simply what's written. Sometimes deciphering the Quests require a bit of translation and a bit of interpretation, but this one is plain and simple.

 

Jim considers it.

 

“Okay,” he finally says, as if he had any choice in the matter.

 

Then he waves his goodbye and leaves.

 

-

 

Mycroft has never seen the same student twice. After they receive their Quests, they leave, and there is no need to come back. They have no more to obtain from the Oracle.

 

But two weeks after meeting the curious, chaotic boy, Mycroft is jerked from his breakfast table and manages to compose himself as footsteps echo and enter the Oracle’s cave.

 

Mycroft sets his elbows on the table he has set up in there, steeples his fingers together before him, and presses them to his mouth, wondering at what the disturbance could be.

 

Jim appears at the entrance, arms swinging, expression sulky. It’s not even half past six in the morning. Mycroft frowns. It’s a Thursday, but he’s not skipping class. But. Well technically it _was_ school grounds. But.

 

“Is it always so boring here?” he asks, loud enough that his petulant voice bounces off the walls.

 

“You're not supposed to be here,” Mycroft says, stern and short about it.

 

The boy wavers, then, instead of looking reprimanded and leaving, he plops down on the rug and sits cross-legged and slouched over.

 

“Do you live here?”

 

“Yes,” Mycroft says.

 

Jim sits up, curious. The room is dome shaped and has one entrance and exit—the tunnel leading outside the mountain. The only furnishing in the space is the single chair and table at which Mycroft is sat. This time, there is a lamp and a rug—Jim has been curious about that, but supposes with such sparse furnishings that maybe a bit of regular redecorating now and then isn’t so strange.

 

What he means, is, this space is certainly not designed for a human to _live_ in. Jim waits patiently, but Mycroft doesn’t elaborate.

 

“ _Where?_ ” Jim asks in an impatient tone of voice when Mycroft continues to ignore him.

 

Mycroft weighs his chances of ignoring the boy until he goes away. He has a younger brother. He knows how this goes.

 

Against his better judgement, he tells him, “Upstairs.”

 

Jim gives him a baffled look tinged with awe. There are no stairs. Is he kidding?

 

“You won't be able to find it from where you are,” Mycroft adds. “Trick of the light. Only visible from one single spot.”

 

Seeing Jim jump up and start searching, Mycroft adds, “You're too short to spot it.”

 

Jim turns around to scowl at him.

 

“In any case, you can't be here,” Mycroft says.

 

He levels him an ominous look for good measure.

 

Jim hesitates, then barrels on with apparently what he came here for.

 

“You see everything, right?” Jim asks. A loaded question.

 

“In a way,” Mycroft replies anyway.

 

“So, you'd know if anything big was going to happen,” Jim says.

 

“I can't give you any clues to your Quest,” Mycroft responds in rote. It wasn't an enforced law so much as it was implied, but it was more or less true.

 

“You watch everything, though, don't you? So you'd know when something bad was about to happen,” Jim says, a simple and innocent question that Mycroft knows belies a frankly astounding amount of research for a boy his age.

 

“That sounds like the kind of question someone about to commit a crime might ask,” Mycroft says instead of an answer. Jim only rolls his eyes.

 

“But you'd know if something fun was going to happen,” Jim pushes.

 

Mycroft just looks at him.

 

Jim tries to wait it out, but he doesn't have the patience.

 

“Spoilsport,” he grumbles, stomping out.

 

Mycroft sighs.

 

-

 

Mycroft is under no illusion that his prophecies and advisement are theoretical and meant to only affect ongoing actions and events in the far future, affecting only generations that have yet come to pass.

 

No, the 18 killed in the cross-fire that resulted in peace negotiations last week were real enough. As was the man imprisoned for a petty crime he had yet to commit simply because it would have spiralled out of control and resulted in a hostage situation that would then damage an intelligence operation. He would walk free in another month, but his relationship with family and colleagues would suffer irreparable damage.

 

Mycroft, no, the Oracle, causes real casualties every day.

 

Yet, he never doubts his judgement.

 

When Mycroft looks at the people and events laid before him, there are possibilities, the shifting smoke-like words that come and go. And then there are the indelible facts written in black and white. Those are the truths Mycroft speaks, because those are the truths only he can see.

 

In five years, ten years, the weight of the responsibility may wear at him. But for now, the cosmic accuracy of his observations takes the ego out of the equation. It's not Mycroft reading the damning future, it's practically reading itself.

 

The accuracy, the inevitability of it all, is what provides him emotional distance.

 

-

 

One week before Christmas Mycroft feels a chill run up his spine, and then a horrible pain shoots up his arm in the middle of a briefing before the Sorcerers’ Council.

 

He's sweating by the time he finishes delivering his prophecies, and after that has to sit through the rest of the meeting holding his arm. It feels like something big is pulling at it. He tries not to let it show.

 

After the meeting is adjourned, he's too dizzy to rush out anyway, and takes his time, letting the others file out first before following suit.

 

Then, the moment he steps out of the chamber, he's whisked away into one of the other few, designated spots one can call upon the Oracle.

 

Mycroft looks up to see he's back on the mountain by the Academy.

 

His breathing is audible and uneven and his sudden presence startles Jim, who spins around and blinks up at Mycroft, having evidently waited quite a while for him.

 

“You can't be here,” Mycroft says before Jim can get his greeting out. “Ever again.”

 

The pain is gone, and Mycroft just feels like a complete fool now.

 

“Leave,” he adds, voice low but allowing for no objections. “Now.”

 

Jim glares at him, but complies.

 

There are, thankfully, no other errant calls that year.

 

-

 

Mycroft has no real relationships at this point.

 

Upon appointment, he had been told to say his goodbyes, and the unsaid words spoke volumes not just because he was now supernormally perceptive. He had been advised to keep to himself, and he understood there was a reason for it. His time was no longer solely his. His advice, his words, were not all his.

 

He had already seen then that had he tried to keep what ties he had close, none of those relationships would have ended well.

 

It stung, but he did it. Better to avoid hurt now than to suffer it later, he thinks. So he said his clumsy goodbyes as best as he could manage and made his retreat.

 

But now he understands. Mycroft sits in a cafe waiting for his next meeting and he sees how clearly one half of a happy couple at the table over is cheating on the other. He sees how the girl by the window is going to fall for a man who lies to her, and in turn make his life a living hell. He sees how the man ordering a cappuccino is going to hate himself for breaking his own principles at the end of his ongoing affair.

 

He sees too clearly now, practically feels the damage from reading so much detail, and it hurts.

 

He couldn’t bear to look someone in the eye and hear that they love him, and see this.

 

Mycroft thanks the stars that he has always been good at being alone.

 

-

 

Mycroft neither looks forward to nor dreads the ten days the next year, but still he is surprised.

 

On the second day, instead of all first years, he sees Jim between a girl who will one day make a split second decision that saves the life of a child but leaves her without full use of her left leg, and a boy who will never make a name for himself but bring great joy to the people who will in the future enjoy his beautifully designed gardens.

 

“What are you doing here?” Mycroft asks before he can stop himself. His anger at the last visit is a distant memory; not felt, but remembered foggily still.

 

Jim gives him a one-shouldered shrug, though his innocent mask isn’t enough to hide his suspiciously curious eyes.

 

“You said I couldn’t come here last time, but obviously people still come to see you every year. I figured you meant it was a bad time,” Jim said.

 

“And?”

 

“So. I’m here now,” Jim says. “And you’re here.”

 

Mycroft purses his lips. He still has trouble written all over him.

 

“You’re taking up time meant to be given to the other students,” Mycroft says.

 

Jim ignores him.

 

“Can you give me another Quest?” Jim asks.

 

“No,” Mycroft says.

 

Jim nods.

 

“I thought so, but I wanted to be sure,” he says. Then, instead of leaving, he takes a seat on a spot on the rug, cross-legged on the floor, and starts fiddling with the fibers.

 

“The Endless Dark,” Jim starts. “It’s supposed to live on the mountain too.”

 

Mycroft can’t help but give him a sardonic smile. _Live._ Live on the mountain, as if the entity that enshrouded the world in darkness some several hundred years ago and took the lives of three powerful sorcerers to seal was a grizzly bear or an urban legend that happened to reside in mountainous territory.

 

“What of it?” Mycroft asks, because he knows Jim already knows all this. “On the other side of the mountain, you will find the seal that’s keeping the Endless Dark from breaking out and once again covering the world in night, blocking out the sun.”

 

Jim looks contemplative.

 

“But it wouldn’t be the same this time, not with all the advancements in energy, would it?” he asks. “After all, not _everyone_ died the last time, and people still lit fires and things.”

 

Mycroft looks appalled. _Not everyone_. As if the slow plague of hundreds of thousands at a time was no small effect. He doesn’t dignify the comment with an answer.

 

Jim sees this and scowls, looking only half sorry and unsure at what.

 

“So,” he starts again, and scratches his nose. “You and the thing are. Neighbors then?”

 

Mycroft stares, caught off guard for a moment.

 

“What?”

 

“You said last time. That you lived here,” Jim replies, like Mycroft should know this.

 

Ah. He did, didn’t he?

 

“In a manner of speaking, I suppose,” he replies. He hadn’t been lying; at a certain spot in the room one could in fact see something of a mirage that then led to a private residence connected to this space via magic, and yes, the Endless Dark did _technically_ “live” next door, as it were.

 

Jim props his elbow up on his knee and squishes his cheek against his fist.

 

“Not much fun, is it?” Jim says. “Bit creepy too?”

 

Mycroft gives him a flat look.

 

“It keeps to itself and never asks for a cup of sugar. We get along just fine.”

 

Jim snorts.

 

“Funny.”

 

Mycroft’s scandalized. He has no real ties to the real world anymore, and his only friend now is this child? No. Absolutely not.

 

“I’m afraid I will need to ask you to leave now,” he says stiffly.

 

“I have more questions,” Jim interjects.

 

“And I am not here to answer them. Students at the Academy are not to make trips to the _Oracle_ for their _personal entertainment,_ Mr. Moriarty,” Mycroft says.

 

“When can I come again?”

 

“Did you not hear a word I just said?”

 

“Last time, you took forever to show up, and I don’t think you were coming from upstairs. Also, you were angry. But, it was very late at night, and so I can understand that you were out. When is a better time?” Jim asks.

 

“I am a very busy man. I will be traveling nearly all of this year, and will not have time to entertain you when you get a little _bored_ at school,” Mycroft drones.

 

Jim purses his lips.

 

“I’ll come every day the first years are coming, if you don’t tell me.”

 

They’re at a standstill again.

 

Mycroft really can’t bargain any times. He isn’t really traveling, he isn’t leaving the country at all, likely not even the city. But his schedule truly is so unpredictable he can’t give an errant student a second of his time. He has nothing to spare.

 

And if he spends a few extra minutes a day talking to the same student for the next week?

 

It’s no skin off his back.

 

“Please?”

 

And that’s how Mycroft ends up telling Jim that on the last Saturdays of each month, in the evening, perhaps Mycroft could spare some time.

 

“On the uncompromised condition that if you are here and I am not, within a minute, you must leave _immediately_ ,” Mycroft adds sternly.

 

Jim looks curious, but knows better than to press for answers when the subject is this cagey. He nods.

 

“Otherwise I’ll let the ghosts do unspeakable things to you and they will never find the body.”

 

Jim narrows his eyes. “I’m too old for ghost stories.”

 

Mycroft shrugs. “They’re not stories.”

 

Jim scowls, unsure whether to believe him or not.

 

-

 

Realizing in no uncertain terms that some things are set in stone and no amount of willing or wishing can change things is enough to send anyone into an existential crisis, Mycroft supposes. If there is no fighting it, what is the point?

 

But that’s not what happens.

 

The politicians and priests Mycroft deals with are well aware that Mycroft’s word will always hold true. But they never stop fighting.

 

Faced with inevitable suffering, the human instinct is to charge forward with denial in any case. This is survival, Mycroft realizes. This is how the human race has continued to prosper.

 

It’s one of the more astounding and beautiful realizations he has had since he became the Oracle. He would have thought futile arguments would be an annoyance to him, and they likely would have if he were in any other position. But watching men stare down death and destruction in the face and, whether due to some sentimentality or loyalty or belief in the greater good, charge forward? It is equal parts idiotic and inspiring and Mycroft finds that while he does not agree, cannot agree, respects the perspective very much.

 

-

 

Jim is lying on his back on Mycroft’s rug, hands folded over his stomach.

 

“Don’t you have friends your own age?” Mycroft despairs, once again bombarded with questions, this time about international politics (of all things!) and why one country hasn’t tried to take over another.

 

Jim narrows his eyes at him. As if to say, _you're one to talk._

 

“I kind of have one friend,” he finally says.

 

He describes a sweet girl who shares an interest in dissections with him, as he learned in science class.

 

“You should ask her to the dance,” Mycroft finds himself saying before he realizes, thinking it will be good for him. He catches himself before all the words are out of his mouth, however, startling internally. He's spent too long trading barbs with politicians and it's become a habit to wield his power of precognition like a weapon, like a shield. This won't do.

 

The boy looks a bit nervous at that, then peeks over.

 

“You think so?”

 

Mycroft can't very well change his mind or rewind time now, so he just gives Jim a look that says he's not about to repeat himself.

 

“What… what should I say?”

 

Oh boy.

 

Mycroft’s thoughts must show up on his face, his expression of infinite exasperation, but the boy is still looking at him expectantly.

 

“You could try being honest,” he says, very drily.

 

After that, the boy chatters on about the girl and classes and what he’s learned in and out of class and what information he suspects they’ve locked up. Mycroft hums and nods enough that it sounds like he’s appropriately listening without having to respond much. This is safer than letting him ask questions, and so he lets it go.

 

It becomes a regular thing.

 

Jim seems to have caught on that, when he’s not endlessly asking questions, Mycroft is more receptive to his company. He seems put out by it the first time or two, but by the time December rolls around, he seems to have accepted it with no small amount of contentment.

 

Mycroft supposes he truly doesn’t have many friends.

 

-

 

In his fourth year, Jim doesn’t show up at all, and rather than relief or disappointment, Mycroft finds it just a tinge foreboding.

 

-

 

Once Mycroft had gotten the hang of his new position, he briefly considered making friends himself. It was laughable. Even before, when he was not shackled with such responsibility, he had cared little to forming friendships. They required an amount of time and energy and nurture he was not willing to give.

 

And now? Everyone he interacts with on a regular basis treats him like a piece of technology. They refuse to see him as someone who is capable of, or might need, human connection.

 

It hadn’t bothered Mycroft before, but now that he’s put the sensation into words, it’s hard not to worry it will wear at him. The distance is deliberate, but not completely on Mycroft’s part. Everyone else seeks to keep their distance as well. Mycroft can’t help but feel a loss of control, that even his solitude is no longer on his own terms.

 

-

 

Mycroft almost thinks the precarious boy has outgrown his rebellious need for companionship and finally gotten in with those of his own age, and finally sees the good sense to keep away.

 

He’s wrong.

 

The next year, Jim slinks in on the very last day of ten, after all the little first years have gone already, and hangs around the entrance until Mycroft finally acknowledges him and more or less invites him in.

 

“If you’re just going to hang around the doorway, you might as well turn around and go,” Mycroft says.

 

Jim ends up eyeing him warily but entering nonetheless. He takes his customary seat on the rug and starts pulling at the fibers despite Mycroft’s horrified look.

 

“So I might’ve...caused a spot of trouble,” Jim says slowly.

 

Bit of an understatement.

 

Jim goes on to explain that he had gone and stolen all three of the Wish Stones. Though the security was truly appalling (banking mostly on the sense of self-preservation and goodwill of the people of the world), he spread the heist out over several months, beginning in his fourth year.

 

But earlier that day, he succeeded in bringing all three of the stones up to the mountain, with the intention of unleashing the Endless Dark. Thankfully (?) two other students, Sherlock (at which Mycroft feels a spark of something warm when Jim mentions his brother) and his friend John had worked to stop him. But it wasn’t until little Molly Hooper came onto the scene that she broke up the fight and derailed Jim’s nefarious (?) plan.

 

Mycroft tries very hard not to lower his face into his hands.

 

“Really, what were you thinking, attempting to plunge humanity back into darkness for who knows how long this time?” he asks tiredly instead.

 

Jim just gives him a half shrug, completely unapologetic.

 

“Well at least you wouldn’t be living right next door to it anymore, right?”

 

Mycroft sighs a long-suffering sigh.

 

“So? Then what happened?” he asks dutifully.

 

“She said her Quest was to take me out,” Jim says to the carpet, before peering up at Mycroft, more self-conscious than ever. The unasked question is obvious.

 

Mycroft’s own expression is nonchalantly blank.

 

“You know I can’t tell you anything about that.”

 

Mycroft spends the rest of the conversation wondering if there’s some way he can find to ask more about the brother he hasn’t seen for five years, but then thinks better of it.

 

-

 

About a month later, Mycroft is sensibly prepared, already at the cave with a crossword and cigarette, when Jim nearly trips over his feet barging in.

 

He immediately throws himself on the ground.

 

“Are you sure I can’t get another one? A different quest.”

 

“You’ve got to stop barging in here everytime you run into a snag,” Mycroft says. “Don’t you have friends now?”

 

Jim scowls and flops over onto his back, flinging an arm across his face in a most dramatic fashion. He mumbles something into the crook of his elbow.

 

“What was that, you’ve got yourself a girlfriend now? Good for you,” Mycroft says, sounding eternally bored.

 

“I didn’t say that!” Jim practically yelps, very plainly nervous. So much so that he jumps up and runs out after some more incoherent curses.

 

-

 

It is on a random Wednesday that Mycroft learns, the hard way, that he is not infallible.

 

He is in the middle of giving a report to a high up operative over tea in a clandestine rooftop spot at a hotel cafe when,

 

“Obviously, the best course of action would be to let Leandres go, as a four person incident will be nothing compared to what might happen in two mon—”

 

The words stop, refusing to flow.

 

Because suddenly, they are no longer true.

  
Letting this one terrorist think he had slipped away in order to fell an entire faction would no longer work. If Leandres was allowed to move freely these next two days, he would hurt not just four people, but take out tens of innocents in a collapsed church as well. The possibility of him then leading the team to his sponsored became increasingly low as the days passed.

 

That’s not all. Images flow past him, showing that had he waited on the Southeast Asian negotiations, perhaps there would not have been so much bloodshed. That the first call he ever made with a casualty count could have gone a different way, could have gone a million different ways.

 

The scenes swim around Mycroft’s head and he grips the table in front of him, pulling at the tablecloth, jostling his cup.

 

“Yes?” the man sitting across from him asks.

 

Mycroft swallows down his previous statement, along with the acidic burn of bile.

 

“He will be staying at a hotel along the river tonight, and tomorrow. He must be captured before the third day is out,” Mycroft says. The man nods, and collects his things to leave.

 

-

 

Mycroft can’t breathe. He can’t see where he went wrong. Were the lines of possibility just not there at the time he had voiced what he saw?

 

Or did he misread things?

 

Did he make a mistake?

 

No, there was no question about the last one; whether Mycroft had spoke too soon or not, he had clearly, obviously, made a mistake.

 

And how was he supposed to know that his most recent read wasn’t a mistake as well?

 

This wasn’t about inevitability anymore. There was blood on his hands.

 

The 19 dead in Cairo early in his career, the spy shot and silenced yesterday, the 17 dead on a bombed bus in the north left to avoid the bigger problem of a downing on a plane—they were calls Mycroft had made.

 

He dry heaves, shoulders shaking.

 

Mycroft doesn’t yet have the experience for this. He wills his mind, his shaking body and heart, to be rational. Had he taken on his original position, and began working in foreign intelligence, no doubt he would be making similar calls.

 

But he would have worked up to it, a tiny part of him protests. He would have had _context._

 

He wouldn’t have mindlessly, helplessly, trusted some cosmic force, some written words no one else could see so blindly, all willy-nilly.

 

Mycroft takes a deep, shuddering breath, finally calming.

 

It doesn’t matter. He has context _now_. If it couldn’t be never, then now was better than later.

 

It still gives him pause.

 

If he had gone up the ranks to do what he does, Mycroft has no doubt he would feel justified. But as it is, he sees a cosmic order he's not sure man is fit to interfere with, and fears either it or his own humanness will cloud his judgement.

 

-

 

Mycroft gets careless.

 

Perhaps it’s because it’s all of so little consequence (not just his conversations, but everything; _everything_ was of so little consequence, in the grand scheme of things, _everything_ ), but Mycroft doesn’t give much thought or weight to Jim’s visits no matter how frequent or infrequent.

 

It’s not until Sherlock’s final year at the Academy (why Mycroft’s keeping track despite the unlikelihood of ever seeing Sherlock again is not something he cares to ever divulge) that he realizes just how careless.

 

He is dozing in the little space carved out for himself, a sort of flat that has no real address in this physical plane, connected to the Oracle’s Cave on the mountain. He wasn’t lying when he said the entrance was only accessible in one very specific certain spot, like a trick of the light.

 

When he wakes, blearily and neck aching from having fallen asleep on the recliner, he sees Jim is there, unaware Mycroft is awake, toying with one of three memory stones sitting on his dresser. A sentimental indulgence Mycroft can’t yet find the will to let go of.

 

Memory stones are just as they sound; the more precious the stone the more vivid a memory it can hold, and let the holder relive it.

 

The first of the three is a childhood birthday, where Mummy and Daddy were both so visibly happy, and Sherlock was only old enough to wobble after Mycroft like a persistent, drunk duckling.

 

The second, which Jim has in hand, undoubtedly watching the scene as if he were in it, an invisible voyeur, is a memory of Mycroft’s first love.

 

The third Mycroft hadn’t had a chance to use.

 

“Jim,” Mycroft says harshly, once he’s snapped awake and aware of what the boy is doing.

 

He has to repeat himself, twice over, before Jim finally sets the stone down, still a bit dazed. He must have seen the whole thing then, and Mycroft braces himself for his characteristic onslaught of questions.

 

Instead, Jim avoids mentioning it at all, and goes on to look and poke at everything he can manage in the flat. It’s veritably a studio, as Mycroft rarely uses it, just ten days out of a year, and has little need to renovate.

 

“So this is where you live?” Jim, the nosy little brat, asks.

 

“Sometimes.”

 

He gives Mycroft a look like he knows more than Mycroft is letting on, but it’s only a glance.

 

“Are you lonely?”

 

“I am not.”

 

Jim finishes circling the place and goes back to fiddling with the dresser.

 

“The last stone was empty.”

 

“Yes it was.” Mycroft runs a hand down his face, much too exhausted to deal with such conversation at the moment. Jim watches him for a long moment, then drops his hand.

 

“You seem tired,” he says, heading to the stairs without prompting. “I’ll see you next month.”

 

By the time he’s gone, Mycroft’s head is no longer filled with afternoon sun and cotton. The chill of cold terror washes over him, as he realizes what he’s done.

 

He’s gotten too comfortable. He’s let someone get too close. He’s gotten careless, and this can only come back to haunt him.

 

-

 

The next month is the last month.

 

Jim’s doing his odd impression of a starfish again, flopped over on Mycroft’s rug all too comfortably.

 

He’s about to graduate, and then Mycroft supposes he will never see him again. All the better, he thinks, remembering the incident from a month ago.

 

“I want to take a year off,” Jim says. “You know, to figure out what I want to do. And things.”

 

“Mm,” Mycroft replies noncommittally. He usually doesn’t even try to pretend he’s following Jim’s monologues, though the 17-year-old doesn’t seem to mind either way.

 

“Molly says she wants to too,” Jim says, slowly, like the beginning of a question.

 

Molly Hooper, Mycroft thinks, Sherlock’s friend. He wants to ask about Sherlock, but finds his tongue as if made of lead all of a sudden. The question won’t come.

 

“So then, what’s the problem?” he asks instead.

 

Jim doesn’t answer, so Mycroft goes back to his crossword.

 

“I guess there isn’t one,” Jim finally says.

 

They spend the rest of the evening in silence, both ignoring the burning questions they know they can't ask.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Asia is the first stop on the list, but it quickly ends up dictating the entirety of the trip.

 

Though no one believes him now, Jim had set foot in Bangkok with the intention of trying to do “normal people things” like “take a holiday overseas” and “experience culture” and other things people of his age were expected to want to do between being a student and holing themselves into a career. 

 

But on Day 1 of this little inane experiment, Jim happens to be traversing through an open-air market when he sees a black market antiquities deal happening in plain sight.

 

He looks around, wondering if anyone else is seeing this too. There’s a little old lady sitting at her little vendor’s booth, casual as anything, talking to a young girl who seems to be checking out the jewelry options.

 

Jim rubs his eyes and looks again. Right. To anyone else this looks like a normal exchange of, what was it? goods and services. A young woman window shopping for trinkets at the market.

 

They don’t notice, like Jim notices, how “sterling silver” and “sapphire” and “how many links does this chain have?” are obviously code for something, because this is not how normal shopping conversations go down, he thinks, but who would really bother to notice? 

 

He wonders if people around here willfully turn a blind eye to underground deals, or if they really are unaware of what’s happening. The market is busy enough after all.

 

Jim decides he needs more information. As the girl leaves, he brushes past her and lifts the signet ring she’d been toying with as she spoke to the vendor right off her finger. 

 

He holds it up to the sun once he’s an inconspicuous distance away. It’s a hunting bird of some sort, nestled into a benign serpent. He can’t help but feel a swoop of excitement run through him, as it looked like this was not going to be an ordinary holiday after all. No, he had a trail to follow, and possibly a high stakes puzzle to decipher.

 

-

 

Jim has always been good at storming his way into things and places. If you act like you belong, Jim learned early on, nine times out of ten people really will just let you go on as if you did belong. 

 

The key was figuring out what “belong” meant in each context.

 

In this case, it’s not glitz and glamour. Jim finds himself in cargo pants pretending to be part of a fake archaeological excavation team and inside he is laughing at the irony of playing an archaeologist after having firmly decided against ever becoming one. It makes it all the easier that half of the guys on this job are fake too, and the purpose of this dig seems to be to smuggle out antiques native to Thailand to be auctioned off elsewhere, in back rooms with covert phrases, whisked away from one cave to another private residence, never to be seen by the public again.

 

The signet, he learns, belongs to some clan of no small influence, able to stage an excavation like this without officials batting an eye. 

 

Jim doesn’t lift a single thing as he takes this all in, instead watching and learning how the operation is handled. It could be useful in the future, he thinks, without finishing the thought of what exactly it might be useful for.

 

When the dig is over, Jim buys a ticket to Hong Kong, not to finish up his backpacking trip through Southeast Asia, but to watch an auction.

 

-

 

Hong Kong, with its nightlight and skyscrapers, does call for glitz and glamour. 

 

Jim puts on a pretty smile and a pretty suit and attends a function on the arm of a wealthy young socialite, who ends up functioning as an introduction to the wife of someone quite important in these circles. 

 

He waxes lyrical about his not entirely untrue passion for art and obtains a second invitation to a gallery opening, and then to an auction where, if he’s correct, will net a couple hundred million US dollars in exchange for a couple of Chinese vases. But in the midst of the cacophony of bids will be silent deals made to move the rest of the inventory, namely, those jade pieces that had been “excavated” in Thailand. 

 

So Jim stays his hand and observes. He learns the language and characters of this particular play, and before the night is out decides it’s time for a test run.

 

He approaches a buyer—one slighted at having been outbid just earlier, but clearly not at peace with the results as he is hovering by the back, downing yet another glass of champagne rather than taking his leave.

 

“Bit disappointing, wasn’t it?” Jim says conversationally, appearing beside him with his own drink. The man doesn’t even look at him. “The inventory,” he adds.

 

Jim says this with a sigh, and slight shake of the head, as if the man should be upset that they hadn’t brought out the best for the auction, not that he had lost a piece that he wanted to add to his collection. The subtle turn of expectations catches his attention.

 

“A big party all for five jade crown pieces, none of them imperial,” Jim continues. “Makes me rethink whether this is the right market to unload the Lost Emperor’s imperial dragon necklace.”

 

That  _ definitely  _ catches his attention.

 

As the party drags on, between the hemming and hawing and very subtle hints dropped in conversation, Jim finally gets the invitation he’d been working toward; a meeting to set up his own auction.

 

Good thing he knows right where the inventory is buried.

 

-

 

Two weeks and 185 million US dollars later, Jim forgets the original plan. 

 

The auctions and shipping business become something of a staple, but really Jim only does it to fund and gather information for the more interesting excavations—the searches for legendary and cursed objects. Many of these are a bust, but the ones that do pan out, well, when the legends are real, let’s just say Jim doesn’t exactly announce this to the world. 

 

It all becomes something of a career, and he never does quite make it back to school. 

 

The closest he gets to the UK in those next few years is France. 

 

Paris, to be more exact, to meet up with Molly before their “gap year” is up. The day they spend together is nothing like their capricious, adventure-filled days and nights from their school years. Conversation is a bit stilted, bodies are a bit stiff, and they spend the entire day with invisible barriers between them, between their minds, like they no longer know how to be with each other. 

 

It’s clear they both want different things now.

 

When she says he’s going to Greece next and he lies about Korea, there is a bit of a finalty to it all. They both know what’s coming, despite it being still unsaid, but Molly being Molly wants to have it out in words, plain and simple ones, so there is no question about it.

 

“I guess this is goodbye then,” Jim says.

 

Molly gives him a bit of a sad smile, and then a peck on the cheek. “I’ll always love you Jim, but I don’t think I’ll ever be  _ in _ love with you, not again at least,” she says.

 

He nods. 

 

“Different times in our lives an all that,” he says.

 

She looks just a bit disappointed, as if she wanted more explicit honesty at the very end. What for? he thinks. What would be the point, so late in the game?

 

His heart hammers as he remembers the advice he was given so long ago. Just be honest with her. He never truly was. Was that why it won’t ever work out? He’s thinking about whether it was all his fault so hard that he nearly misses her last words.

 

“We’re probably just not meant for each other,” Molly says. “Goodbye Jim.”

 

She gets in the cab and he waves from the sidewalk, and it really is as simple as all that. Jim gets on a plane back to Asia, where he’s there to appraise a ruby the size of an egg. He was hoping it would be the Serpent’s Heart jewel, but it’s sounding more and more like that’s not the case. It won’t curse the holder with any insatiable greed, coupled with the mixed fortune to obtain a set half of what they want. It’s just a very expensive rock.

 

-

 

The next time he’s back to the UK is a good half dozen years after that, at least. 

 

By the time he’s 25, Jim’s amassed a small fortune, enough to live comfortably enough the rest of his life if he wanted to settle down somewhere quiet. That’s not what he wants, of course, so he spends his plane ride calculating how much risk he can take on various expeditions and comes to the conclusion that, really, the world is his oyster, by the time he lands in London. 

 

The trip is more for nostalgia than anything. 

 

Until he passes by a new cafe that’s opened up near Parliament, at least. 

 

Jim does a double take as he walks past the glass storefront, startling a young couple exiting the cafe. But no, he’s not wrong; the man sitting at the back of the cafe in serious conversation with another Suit is definitely the same man he spent his Academy years pestering.

 

And he realizes he’s missed him.

 

Jim hadn’t thought about it during his years abroad, hadn’t let himself think of anything from his life before, only throwing himself into the work, gathering and gathering, filling himself on all the information and resources he could get his hands on. Not family or friends or really anything else.

 

This.

 

This is more than nostalgia.

 

Jim knows as soon as he sees him he knows he has to go in there, and so he decides to make a joke of it by pressing his face close to the window, hands cupped around his eyes so he can better see. He waves furiously and gives the Oracle a wide grin—

 

—and delights in the look of abject horror that spreads across the older man’s face.

 

Oh he hasn't forgotten him either then. Good. 

 

The Oracle, as discreetly as possible, signals ABORT, ABORT! Jim laughs, head back and jovial, and shoves his hands in his pockets. He makes a show of hanging back outside the cafe, but after a few minutes jogs back up to the door and goes in to order himself an espresso. He doesn’t miss the jolt of panic the Oracle no doubt gets from  _ that _ , and the relief when Jim opts to sit at his own table by the window and spends the next fifteen minutes people watching. Jim’s being way more conspicuous than he’d normally allow, but this is a holiday, he feels he can afford it.

 

He waits until the Suit the Oracle is meeting with leaves, and then waits a few more minutes, before ordering a pastry and taking up the seat across from this man he’s missed.

 

“So, will you finally tell me your name?” is the first thing Jim says to him. Though truthfully, he’s never really thought to ask. He wonders why that is.

 

The man levels him a very dry look, and Jim gives him a crooked smile.

 

“That won’t work on me anymore.”

 

“Oh, because you know better now, is that right?” 

 

“Hmm, maybe,” Jim takes a big bite out of the flaky pastry and chews, mouth full and obviously unable to talk. Surprising how something so simple can often prompt the other party to speak. The man gives him a look like he knows what he’s doing, but Jim waits it out anyway. He swallows. 

 

“Mycroft,” the Oracle finally answers. 

 

Jim is genuinely surprised; he knew there was a chance the man wouldn’t answer. He tries to mask it by wiping his hands off with the cloth napkin before holding a hand out to shake.

 

“Nice to meet you, Mycroft.”

 

Jim can’t help but feel like he’s won something, being able to put a name to the powerful, all seeing being. But, truth be told, Mycroft ceased being the mystical, mythical Oracle to him years ago. Possibly never was. He knew it was presumptuous to think that, but Jim didn’t care. 

 

He catalogues every detail of him now. The beginnings of fine lines around his eyes. He must be in his mid-thirties, but in a year or two he supposes he’ll be in another age bracket. He is possibly the most quietly burdened man Jim has ever seen. The very embodiment of melancholy. Keeper of infinite secrets.

 

He'd still recognize him anywhere. 

 

Jim notices him rubbing his thumb and index finger pads together.

 

“Still smoking?”

 

That gets odd look from the Oracle. Mycroft now.

 

“I’m trying to stop.”

 

And it drudges up a cold memory for Jim. A deafening onslaught of rain. Two boys taking shelter under an umbrella, held under a too-shallow awning and they stood side by side, leaning into each others’ space, watching the empty road. 

 

One of them says something and laughs, before bringing the cigarette in his hand to his mouth. A younger Mycroft watches him, almost lovelorn, before plucking the cigarette from him and capturing the boy’s mouth with a kiss instead. 

 

It’s chaste but lingers on, sickeningly sweet, filled with unvoiced devotion and longing.

 

Jim had been jerked into the scene when he picked up a memory orb off the Oracle’s dresser that one evening, and couldn’t stop watching until the end.   And Jim, watching this, then and now, feels envy in every single cell of his. 

 

He glances up at Mycroft now, and then his eyes drop, briefly, to Mycroft’s lips.

 

“Do you still miss him?” he asks, before he can think better of it. He feels he has to know. Who was that, that could make such a lasting impression. “Is that why, the cigarettes?”

 

He’s startled Mycroft, he can see that. 

 

“No,” Mycroft says.

 

Jim’s never been able to tell whether he’s lying or not.

 

He changes the subject.

 

“How have you been?” Jim asks. Mycroft just stares at him as if he’d never heard such a question. Jim blinks, tries a different tack. “Must be boring without me around hm?”

 

“Yes, because seeing the fate of the world on a daily basis is oh so dull in the absence of one singular soul.”

 

Ah, there’s the repartee he’s used to. Jim smiles.

 

“Well, are you done for the day? Or do you still have fortunes to tell? Let’s go get dinner, I’m only here for two days and I leave tomorrow,” Jim says.

 

But Mycroft just stands, buttoning his jacket.

 

“Unfortunately, I am not done for the day,” he says, bidding his farewell. “Goodbye, Mr. Moriarty.”

 

He hesitates.

 

“I’m glad to see you’ve been well.”

 

Then he leaves.

 

Jim’s left to take in the dwindling sunlight filtering into the cafe alone, facing the wall against which Mycroft was sitting. He thinks it over, and makes a plan.

 

-

 

Jim’s first stop early that morning is the tailor’s, to get fitted for a suit that he won’t be able to pick up unless he books another trip back after his excursion in Taiwan. 

 

Then he checks his watch, and leisurely makes his way to Downing Street. 

 

He’s scrolling through his phone when, as expected, one set of footfalls from politicians passing him by separates from the crowd, and stops before him.

 

Jim smiles up at Mycroft and pulls his sunglasses off.

 

“I forgot to give you my number yesterday,” he says, digging into his coat pocket for a card. “Here. Personal line.”

 

Mycroft is slow to accept the card, but he does accept it and that's all that matters. 

 

“I fly out again tonight, let me know if you’re free?”

 

Mycroft’s still looking at the card, and he doesn't agree, but he isn't rejecting Jim either.

 

“Oh come on, you know I'll be able to find you anywhere, always have been. Save me the trouble and just give me a ring?” 

 

Mycroft gives him a wry smile and tucks the card into his jacket pocket.

 

“I'm not as free as you are, Mr. Moriarty. We'll see.”

 

-

 

Mycroft never does call, so Jim gets back on the plane alone and without having said goodbye. He finds he prefers it that way. 

 

He has a busy three months after that and it doesn’t bother him at all that he was brushed off in London. Jim has caught wind of a rumor that the Maharaja’s Soul has surfaced, and chases that lead all the way from Taiwan to India to the islands. 

 

What’s with these powerful dead sorcerers becoming artifacts of skeptical power, anyway? Jim thinks. The Maharaja’s Soul is more of a myth within the archeology community than the Wish Stones he set his hands on as a child, and the story that goes along with it is far less noble.

 

Jim will never forget the thrum of power, surprisingly benign, when he picked up that first Wish Stone. Each one pulsed with a different frequency, conveying a different “personality,” and that experience made him undoubtedly believe that each Stone was once a person, a powerful person, who in the doing of one last good deed, condensed their soul down into nothing but that singular wish.

 

Like he said, noble.

 

The Maharaja’s Soul is nothing like that. As the myth goes, there was a rich and powerful benevolent prince who was caught in the middle of some soap opera-level romantic drama. He fell in love with a woman below his class, and his scorned betrothed made a deal with a djinn which went south—the prince indeed forgot all about his peasant lover, but instead became madly, literally madly, infatuated with the disguised djinn, and went to extreme lengths to have his way. He tried to rearrange heaven and earth for the love marriage his heart so pined for, and a lot of collateral damage was to be had. 

 

Eventually, all was for naught. He himself made a poor deal with the djinn, and his soul was forever to be trapped in the gorgeous stone set in a piece of wedding jewelry that nobody would ever wear. 

 

It’s said that the sand of the desert swept it away, covered it up. No one mourned this Maharaja.

 

As far as Jim knows, the story that this stone which contained this silly man’s soul also granted a wish, a wish big enough to move heaven and earth, did not start circulating until roughly a century after which the events could have historically taken place, so his reason for seeking out the artifact is less for wish purposes and more for collector reasons and bragging rights. 

 

What would he wish for anyway?

 

In the half dozen years Jim has been traversing between these rocky underground paths and shiny marble-floored ballrooms, he amassed enough wealth that he figures he can buy whatever he so wishes. He’s been thinking of getting an island, just because. 

 

He knows, deep down, that he’s lucky some of these things are so hard to find, some might never be found, because if he ever ran out of trinkets to track down he might just get so bored he will have to do something bad.

 

He’s been to more cities than he ever thought he would see, some he’s spent weeks in them without really having seen them. And some days,

 

Some days, he’s not sure what he’s looking for. He just knows he needs to keep moving. 

 

-

 

Late morning in Mongolia, Jim is surprised to be getting a phone call given that the high altitude inn he’s staying at has such poor reception. His tech must be working then.

 

“Hello?”

 

There’s no answer. It’s an unlisted number, and Jim had hopes, but the trepidation in the silence is really confirms it. He smiles before he realizes it.

 

“Up late? Or is it early?” Jim asks. It must be about 3 in the morning in London.

 

An apologetic sigh. 

 

“Doesn’t make much of a difference, I suppose,” Mycroft finally says, before trailing off, like he’s forgotten why he’s called. The silence is not uncomfortable, but Jim doesn’t want silence.

 

“Do you want to hear about my latest expedition?” he asks. Mycroft scoffs a bit at that.

 

“No, it’s no doubt illegal, and I won’t be party to any of your little crimes.”

 

“ _ Little _ ? Really? We’re going there?” Jim is half offended. “It’s not like they would possibly call an Oracle to testify against  _ anything anyway _ .”

 

“That’s not how it works.”

 

“Anything you hear you can just pretend you already know. Do you already know?”

 

“The information is...available to me, in a way.”

 

“Do you have to take a class in how to speak cryptically  _ all the damn time _ ?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Jim fiddles with the case he has sitting at the foot of his bed.

 

“I’ll be in Brussels in two weeks, and London in three,” he says. “Have a drink with me?”

 

More hesitation.

 

Jim opens his mouth, about to argue his point, though what he means to say he doesn’t even know. He’s saved from that gaffe, though, because Mycroft replies.

 

“If time permits.”

 

-

 

Time  _ does _ permit, Jim is very happy to report, but it’s not going how he thought it would at all.

 

Mycroft frowns at him from across the table, umbrella at his side despite the weather reports not saying a thing about rain.

 

“What happened to that nice girl, Molly, was it?”

 

Jim gives him a completely affronted look, before waving the waiter over to order their drinks. After he leaves, Jim levels him another look.

 

“That’s where we’re going? Really? We’re going to talk about our exes already? Heavy stuff for a first date, Mycroft.”

 

“Is that what this is?” Mycroft replies easily.

 

So cold. This man is going to be the death of him.

 

No matter. Jim was never afraid of diving into the deep end. He tells Mycroft about him and his childhood sweetheart, and the perception of shortcomings on both their ends.

 

“She told me it seemed like there was always a part of me I held back from her, and that she loved all of me, so I didn’t have to hide that part of me away. That she knew there was something different with me, that’s what made me special, and that she accepted all of that, that I didn’t have to work so hard to hide it away,” Jim says without much flair, rotating the amber liquid in his tumbler lazily. Mycroft just listens. 

 

“But did she ever think that maybe I wasn’t  _ willing _ to share that part of myself with her?” 

 

“I’d wondered too, at the beginning, whether I was working fruitlessly to be someone I wasn’t. For her. And whether she would hate me for it, in a I know-you know-I’m lying sort of way.”

 

“Hm, but, no, that wasn’t it. I was more comfortable playing that one part with her, being just one side of myself with her,” Jim says. “I’m not comfortable being all of myself with everyone. No one could be.”

 

Mycroft takes a sip of his drink, processing.

 

“People endeavor to be understood, though, fully. Do they not?”

 

Jim rolls his eyes. 

 

“Don’t talk about people as if you weren’t people,” Jim tells him. “And it’s key to be understood by the right people. That’s what matters. Some people will never get it the way you want them to get it. And sometimes the way you want to be understood isn’t  _ fully _ either. Haven’t you ever loved someone who you desperately wanted to be seen by only in a good light?”

 

Mycroft sets down his tumbler.

 

“Yes,” he starts, and it almost seems as if he’s given up on the rest of the sentence. But after a long pause, he continues, “but I knew it wouldn’t last.”

 

-

 

Before they part ways, Mycroft tells Jim what he thinks is just the strangest thing.

 

Jim almost wants to giggle at how prim and proper the evening has been, just drinks and a walk despite them having been at a hotel bar and they might as well have been having tea. It was all so oddly innocent. Half play-acting, half life-or-death serious. And now he’s walking Mycroft to a cab because Oracle dwellings obviously need to be top secret and it’s cute how anyone thinks information like a mere  _ address _ can be kept from Jim. 

 

He is seriously contemplating a kiss at the door, the type you give when you know the girl’s father is inside waiting up for her, but then the words out of Mycroft’s mouth before he gets into the car is so strange it throws him.

 

“Sometimes I wonder if it would not have been better if I never existed,” he says, contemplatively, not sadly. “No doubt for yourself as well.”

 

He’s still stunned when Mycroft nods his goodbye before closing the door, and then Jim is left blinking on the sidewalk alone as the car pulls away.

 

Who even  _ says _ that?

 

-

 

Mycroft calls again when it’s sometime before 3 or 4 in London, and a comfortable nearly-noon time where Jim is. 

 

“FYI,” Jim says, when Mycroft doesn’t know how to start, “that was definitely a date.”

 

“Was it.”

 

“It is, it was. We’re dating now,” Jim says.

 

“Hmm.” He sounds like he’s thinking it over. “Long distance?”

 

“I’ll be in London as often as I can. You lied when you said you traveled, didn’t you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Yes to my visiting frequently, or yes to the lying?” If Mycroft was going to be deliberately opaque, Jim was going to be blunt.

 

Another pause, but Jim waits it out, leaning forward at his desk and fiddling with the corner of a map that’s been unfurled across the wood.

 

“Both,” Mycroft finally says.

 

Jim stops fiddling. He has half a mind to book the next flight out, nearly forgetting that he has to trek back out the jungle to get to the jet first. 

 

“Let’s do a video call next time—” Jim says.

 

“No.”

 

And the line goes dead. 

 

Jim squints at the phone, unsure whether Mycroft is just really shy, or actually so incredibly busy.

 

-

 

Jim’s interest in cursed and blessed artifacts inevitably, eventually went beyond just  _ finding  _ them. In fact, early on, he wondered if the procedure of creating a Wish Stone could be replicated, and persuaded a down-and-out divorced who’d been recently diagnosed with untreatable cancer that summoning an Endless Dark was a good idea. That the payout was a good idea in any case. Sort of like life insurance.

 

But it was a failed experiment. A weak summoning, a prison sentence for the man, and no real damage caused at all. 

 

At this point, the obvious line of reasoning was that if he wanted to do something right, well, he was going to have to dive into the deep end of the occult, wasn’t he?

 

It proved oddly difficult not for the usual reasons, like morality or the sacrifices required, but because many of the sites on which a proper summoning could be conducted were no longer existing geographical features. Sea levels rising and erosion and real estate development and the felling of entire forests and jungles made it that these ideal spots where you were the right distance from the sea and the mountains and the right angle away from the moon on whichever whatever day—they simply did not exist.

 

So Jim realized that if he wanted to do this himself, and do it right, he’d have to built the conditions with which to summon the Endless Dark, or something like it. He’d need to have the means to buy at least three islands. That would take some time. 

 

-

 

Jim and Mycroft walk together on a supremely chilly September afternoon and Jim offers to fly him to some tropical place and have him back by morning, but Mycroft doesn’t even acknowledge the suggestion.

 

Despite the weather, there is a large crowd of people just a ways ahead of them, seemingly made up of largely university students. It doesn’t occur to Jim that he’s only a few years older than them, because he simultaneously feels eternally young and aged beyond his years deep in his bones on most days. 

 

But he catches Mycroft looking wistfully at the crowd and gives him a curious look.

 

“Do you miss being like that, then?” Jim asks.

 

“I miss the luxury of disappearing into a crowd, I think,” Mycroft says. At Jim’s incomprehension, he adds, “I can’t even blend in if I’m not really here anyway, can I?”

 

Jim purses his lips. He’s trying to understand, he really is. But he doesn’t. 

 

At times it feels like the two of them are on completely the same wavelength and Mycroft is in fact without a doubt his favorite person to converse with. But then sometimes the man radiates such overwhelming sadness that Jim can’t help but worry.

 

Mycroft catches Jim’s unease and gives him a half-hearted half smile. 

 

“I do enjoy your visits, but I want to be clear that you should not expect much from me. You  _ cannot _ expect much from me,” he says. Then, quieter, “I’m extremely difficult to be with.”

 

For some reason that gets Jim’s hackles up. That’s just  _ not true _ (though he’s unsure why he feels so defensive about it. Defensive on who’s behalf anyway?)

 

“We  _ belong together _ ,” Jim insists, before he’s sorted out the why and the words. 

 

Mycroft gives him a sardonic smile.

 

“No, I already belong to far too many people,” he replies, before turning away.

 

Jim knows, rationally, that they’ve only met up a handful of times, and that if he added up every single one of them throughout the years it would not have been a spectacularly high figure. But it doesn’t keep him from feeling ridiculously close to Mycroft and just a bit entitled about it. It’s not just the many years they’ve known each other, Jim thinks, it’s simply understanding that one thing at the center of a person’s soul, that one essential thing, that makes all the difference. 

 

-

 

Jim delays his trip back to Mongolia by a day, once he gets back to his hotel, but he hasn’t yet told Mycroft. Without realizing, he’s hours into his work and on a dozen lines with a dozen teams at the same time, because not working toward obtaining,  _ obtaining period _ , felt like death. And why be in one place at a time when he could be in a dozen all at once? The world fit in the palm of his hand, and wasn’t that supposed to be a great feeling?

 

Jim is simultaneously juggling deals with various suppliers, trying to parlay the results into something less conventional. To trade in these oversized emeralds and diamonds for cursed scepters and a haunted piece of jewelry or two. He absent-mindedly thinks that he should show Mycroft the vault, because he’s having it moved to London for kicks, and gets a ping on a cell he rarely uses, notifying him of more chatter about the Maharaja’s Soul.

 

UNLISTED

_ Discussion in Korea. Man says it’s in the possession of a rich widow, well known, very secretive.  _

_ Intoxicated, high-end gambling den. Low priority.  _

 

Jim hms and set the phone down after reading the text, blasting off replies to the other suppliers he’d been in touch with. Then he thinks better of it and tells his man to follow the lead. He can afford it, after all. Plus, chatter had increased recently, and he had an inkling someone was starting to catch on to him.

 

His phone pings again and Jim reaches for it without looking, thinking it an update about Korea. 

 

It’s not. It’s a phone call. From Mycroft, at 2 a.m.

 

“Can’t sleep?” Jim asks.

 

Jim wonders if he’s only imagining that Mycroft sounds a bit surprised. This is a phone conversation, and the man hasn’t even said anything.

 

“You’re still in London?” Mycroft asks. 

 

“How did you know?” Jim replies. If he can’t explain it himself, maybe Mycroft can. 

 

“Can I see you?” Mycroft asks instead, and Jim will take that over an explanation any day. 

 

-

 

They wander aimlessly for who knows how long, and Jim prays for the sun to never come up again, for the darkness of this night to drag on forever.

 

It doesn’t, though, and they end up in front of a stately looking but nondescript house that after a moment Jim realizes is Mycroft’s.  _ Oh _ . This is where he lives. Or perhaps it is only one of the many places where he lives. 

 

It’s all laughably proper when Jim walks him back up to his door, but then there’s a pause, there’s a moment, and JIm grabs onto it.

 

Their first kiss is—

 

It’s nothing like he expected.

 

See, Jim knows he has a tendency to fixate. 

 

When he’s on the hunt for any one particular artifact, it consumes him; it’s the only thing on his mind, and even in sleep he dreams of it, of the chase, of the capture. The more difficult the expedition and the more mythical the artifact, the greater the anticipation.

 

And the moment right before he gets his hands on it is  _ electrifying _ .

 

It makes the work addictive. 

 

Afterwards though, it’s a wrap. Once the treasure’s in hand, it’s….boring, if he’s being honest.

 

It’s over.

 

And it’s on to the next. The exhilaration doesn’t last. 

 

So Jim  _ knows _ he tends to fixate, to blow things up out of proportion and build things up in his mind so that the reality falls short.

 

But this? This is nothing,  _ nothing _ like that.

 

He doesn't feel like he's finished, like he's finally obtained what he's been working toward.

 

No, this time, having the instance he’s dreamt about turn reality isn’t just an “I was right” moment.

 

He was so,  _ so _ wrong.

 

It's a million times better than he could have imagined.

 

Mycroft’s lips move over his, soft but insistent, before capturing Jim’s bottom lip between his own. And Jim wonders if his heart is going to explode.

 

When they pull apart, Jim’s heart is still hammering in his chest and he can’t do anything bu fix his eyes upon Mycroft’s, hoping his own communicate what he no longer can with words. 

 

He’s never been so glad to be  _ wrong. _

 

He feels relief mixed with the exhilaration, he feels ready to fly, ready to crumple, anticipation on top of a the stillness of peace, and the emotions themselves are way too turbulent and confusing to sift through for truth right now, so Jim pushes them to the back of his mind and then all that’s left is a little voice in his head pleading with him to stay.

 

Staystaystaystay _ staystaystay. _

 

He licks his lips, conscious of Mycroft’s hand still cupping his face, and leans into it.

 

“Please let me stay,” he says, the words coming out barely louder than a whisper. 

 

-

 

“What do you want? More than anything.”

 

“I want to disappear.”

 

“Do you want to go away?”

 

“No, I want to disappear. Dissolve back into the universe. Like I never existed.

 

“I…. it’s not death. I don’t want to  _ die _ so much as I… 

 

“It should be like I was never born at all.”

 

“Why don’t you just go away? Wouldn’t it be easier? Disappearing isn’t that hard, if you know how to do it. If you have the right means. And don’t say you have obligations, Mycroft. Not to them, not to me. What has the world ever done for  _ you _ ? Truly. I can give you alone, if alone is what you want. Even from me.”

 

“I don’t want to go somewhere else, I don’t want to start over. I don’t want to be missing, and I don’t want anyone to miss me.

 

“The role I play is absolutely nonessential. Yet my influence has no bounds. 

 

“I just want to….stop.”

 

“Stop?”

 

“Being.”

 

-

 

Jim doesn’t truly understand what Mycroft means when he says he’s not his own until he sees it happen in front of his eyes. 

 

It’s a wonderful, gorgeous morning not because of the weather, it’s not like Jim can even see what it’s like out in the city from under his cloudlike duvet. No, he’s free and pleasantly broken free of the night’s sleep and Mycroft is there not a few feet away, finishing up with his cufflinks. 

 

He let him stay.

 

Mycroft turns to watch him when he hears the rustle of sheets and Jim stretching and his smile is returned immediately. Jim waves him over and Mycroft hesitates, then takes one step, two,

 

Mycroft is about to lean down to press a kiss to Jim’s face when

 

nothing.

 

He just

  
  


disappears. 

 

-

 

Jim has to convince himself it’s not all just a dream, and it’s overwhelmingly difficult to do so despite all the physical evidence. It’s not like he broke into a stranger’s apartment in a city he doesn’t live in, barely has ties to, and made this all up.

 

He can’t reach Mycroft for several hours, and the rational part of his brain knows there is nothing wrong at all.

 

As a joke, it would uncharacteristically cruel. And he knows it’s not a joke.

 

Rationally, it’s just disquieting. But he's not quite rational when it comes to Mycroft.

 

No, he realizes as he sits in the flat alone trying to guess at what objects belong to Mycroft and which don't, when it comes to Mycroft, he worries that he will never understand that one essential part that makes up the core of his being. Not the way Mycroft understands Jim. They're uneven, and that gnaws at him.

 

Now that he's put the worry into words, he fears it won't go away at all. Not like how the mystery of Mycroft’s disappearance is so easily solved.

 

Jim later learns that this is how it works: There are three forums in the city in which the Oracle takes audiences, and the mere entrance of a person seeking out the Oracle is enough to summon him to appear. 

 

Two of these locations are deep inside government buildings, with one stately and regal and used mainly for matters of the state, and the other carved into stone underground in the style of old Classical temples, used mainly for the mystical. The third one is the cave up in the mountain, where students every year go to obtain their Quests.

 

Hence him being so upset that one year, Jim remembers. Being summoned to two places simultaneously just didn't happen (how bad could Academy security  _ get _ ?). The magic tugged at him insistently, to the point where it became painful.

 

Jim knew, vaguely, theoretically, that this was what the work of an Oracle probably was. He never sought to grasp the details of the reality of living as one, until now.

 

Mycroft is patient with Jim’s clinginess afterward, and neither of them mentions that night how Jim has missed his flight.

 

-

 

It doesn't even occur to Jim until the next day that he needs to leave.

 

He has a black tie event scheduled in South Korea as a front, and he needs to make an appearance. He can still do that, but now he’s not there to supervise the event planning as he usually does, and he can’t quite bring himself to care.

 

Something that’s not quite contentment, more like a constant buzz, settles into his bones, and Jim is surprised to see that it’s changed his perspective and priorities so swiftly and with such totality. 

 

He doesn’t promise to come back to London on this or that timeline, and Mycroft doesn’t ask anything like that of him either.

 

Over the next few months the times they see each other are few and far between, but as the year drags on, Jim’s trips to London become more and more frequent.

 

They’ve always made each and every visit count, dragging out the hours whenever they may be, whenever time permits. With each trip, Jim is confident he’s burrowed deeper and deeper into the older man’s heart, and more and more he thinks that it’s all he wants to never leave.

 

Halfway through the year, Jim arrives at Mycroft’s flat before Mycroft does, and finds an envelope stuck to the door, directing him to mailbox. He finds it unlocked, and inside there is a key taped to the top, along with a note that says in no uncertain terms that it is his to keep.

 

“It’s cute you think I need a key to get in,” Jim says when Mycroft finally comes in the front door.

 

“I see you’ve already made yourself comfortable,” Mycroft gives him one of those barely-there smiles. “And what makes you assume the key was just for convenience? What if that was my way of broaching the topic of moving in together?”

 

Jim nearly drops the mug of tea he has halfway to his lips.

 

“Yes,” he answers immediately.

 

“I haven’t asked yet.”

 

“But you will, and I’m saying yes.”

 

Mycroft walks over, and Jim sets down the tea, lifting his chin as Mycroft leans down to kiss him.

 

-

 

They both learn, they both  _ knew _ , that being alone was not the entirety of the problem. 

 

See, the problem is, the are both completely untethered souls being whipped around in the endless current of the world. And, Jim fears, neither of them was ever meant to be an anchor. 

 

Having Jim doesn’t magically cure Mycroft of his melancholic moods, and for Jim, even having his fill of Mycroft’s attention doesn’t sate his need to increasingly fixate. When once a month is no longer enough, he moves his base of operations to London to it can be weekly at the very least. And then it’s still not enough. 

 

After spending an entire day together, once, Jim remembers waking up the next morning alone and feeling as if he had no will to move ever again. 

 

Mycroft compares it to an addiction, once, and Jim doesn’t say anything at all. 

 

-

 

Sometimes, when things are especially tedious, Jim lies down, very flat on the ground, and pretends he’s ceased to exist on this temporal plane. 

 

When Mycroft walks into the flat, there Jim is—back flat on the ground, palms face down, breaths so slow and meditatively quiet they’re barely there. 

 

Jim follows Mycroft with his eyes from his position on the carpet without so much as moving a hair. He watches the taller man step into the kitchen, his fingers restless, twitching as if they’re missing something. Something to hold. Mycroft brings his right hand up to his mouth; there’s nothing there. He curls his fingers down, clenches his fist tightly, just for a short second, pressing it to his mouth, before dropping his hand.

 

The reminder doesn’t last. As he rummages through the cupboard for the tea, his fingers grow restless once again, of their own accord.

 

Jim swallows. Then he rolls up and hops to his feet. In one, two, three long strides he crosses the living room. Bounces into the kitchen, and grabs Mycroft by his arms, turning him so they’re face to face.

 

“Hi,” Jim greets.

 

Mycroft gives him a little crooked smile, eyes more tired than anything else.

 

Jim grabs his face and pulls him down for a kiss. This is a reminder. And it’s Jim’s privilege to give it. 

 

Mycroft makes a surprised little sound, still not used to the touch and contact Jim so freely gives him now, and Jim swallows it down. Takes the opportunity to lick into Mycroft’s mouth. Then smiles into the kiss.

 

Finally, he breaks apart.

 

“Memorable?” Jim asks.

 

Mycroft’s a bit breathless, and Jim runs his thumb along Mycroft’s jaw.

 

“Yes,” he says. He holds his eye contact with Jim as he reaches up to take Jim’s hand, removing it from his face to hold and press a kiss to the knuckles.

 

It’s a chase, gentle gesture, but it lights Jim’s nerves on fire. 

 

No one else gets to see Mycroft Holmes like this,  _ no one _ . No one else gets to see the burning intent in his eyes, gets to see him  _ want. _

 

“I love you,” Jim says in response. Mycroft never puts it into words, but into little gestures and looks like these. And it’s no less meaningful for either of them.

 

-

 

Mycroft pulls away, and Jim follows, chasing the kiss. Mycroft takes his hand instead, laughing silently, and then presses a kiss to his wrist.

 

“You know I would have no qualms burning down the world for you,” Jim says.

 

Mycroft doesn’t sigh but he might as well have.

 

“I do know,” Mycroft says.  _ And that’s a problem _ , Jim hears.

 

He pulls his hand back.

 

“I don’t understand. What has the world ever done for  _ you _ that you feel such a misguided sense of loyalty?”

 

Mycroft gives him a half shrug. “House me?”

 

“That’s the stupidest answer I’ve ever heard.”

 

Mycroft throws a leg over his instead of answering, and then sits up to straddle Jim, pushing him back on the sofa.

 

-

 

UNLISTED

_ Another hit, in Geneva of all places. Amateur says he’s got the MS. Practically broadcasted the invite. Everyone knows. Waste of time? _

 

The increase in interest in the Maharaja’s Soul makes it rounds through the networks, and, as expected, so did the amount of noise and false leads. Jim himself’s had several fake identities of his put out an interest in buying, and now all the world’s abuzzing about it.

 

The strategy is sure to surface a slew of fakes and frauds, but no matter. It’s good data, and it could even help Jim to suss out whether someone who has real information about it is trying to keep it hidden.

 

M.

_ Go. _

 

He’s about to send someone to check out Geneva, then changes his mind. Deletes the text.

 

M.

_ I’ll handle it personally. _

 

He flies out the next day to meet an amateur who clearly does not run in the art and antiquities circles, and he wonders why this fool thinks he has the right to waste anyone’s time. Truly, Jim is curious. He knows a con when he sees one, and this man is stupidly innocent.

 

“I found it, while cleaning out my great great uncle’s estate,” the man says, scratching his wrist with a finger. He’s indeed been cleaning out dusty attics and storage rooms for the good part of the last month, Jim deduces. This whole setup is incredibly odd.

 

“I, um, I have photographs, if you’d like to see,” the alleged seller says. He opens the folder he’d brought, but doesn’t yet show it to Jim. “I can’t let you keep them, you understand. But I figured you’d want. Proof? And I’m not planning to show the real thing until I can better gauge the interest of potential buyers, you understand.”

 

Jim hopes to hell the legal jargon at the end meant he was at least a teensy bit familiar with what he was getting himself into. He nods, and waves over the file.

 

The seller sets it down on the table between them, and Jim tilts his head, studying the photograph.

 

He does so for a long time.

 

“Are you still interested?”

 

Jim commits every plane and curl of the piece of jewelry from the photograph to memory.

 

“Yes, very.”

 

-

 

Sometimes, even in sleep, Mycroft looks on guard, slightly stressed, or even deeply sad, and so it’s always a wonder when Jim catches him completely at peace. 

 

He stares now, elbow propped up on a pillow, and the horrible memory of Mycroft being jerked awake one night before promptly disappearing resurfaces unbidden. Jim scowls before he can help it, then stills himself again. He doesn’t want to wake the man who seems so fearful of something as benign as sleep on most days.

 

-

 

There are seven buyers in the room. Six of them laugh and scoff and exit as quickly as they came, leaving the expensive liquor set out for them untouched.

 

Jim approaches the case.

 

"Can I hold it?" he asks.

 

He can see why they left; the stone is a dinky little thing compared to other gems of similar price, cracked even, and quite dull. Jim supposes it's fitting as the soul of a petty man who couldn't quite commit and left his kingdom to ruin in his obsessive quest for love. The collar necklace it's set in is also unlike any of the designs floating around, but when it came this piece almost all information surrounding it was false rumor anyway. And Jim could see it was accurate to its time and location.

 

The seller hesitates, but, perhaps remembering he's no other buyers, nods.

 

Jim lifts the necklace without much more pretense, and then covers the red stone, about the size of a quail's egg. Immediately, power thrums through him. Something sinister and sad. Petty but powerful.

 

This...

 

This could do it. This could wish the world away and make it so that nothing so omniscient ever existed in one man. Could create a world unreliant on magic. A world that knew no magic, even.

 

And if that's the only thing he wants? Then Jim wants it too. He's more than happy to give it.

 

The end of the world's not so bad, when you have someone like that to share it with, he thinks.

 

Jim gives the seller a careful look.

 

"How much?"

 

He looks surprised.

 

"Well I, originally in the call I know I said something in the ballpark of—"

 

While the man is stammering to gather his thoughts and goals, Jim reaches for his gun and uncloaks it from his side, bringing it up to shoot the man point blank.

 

The shot echoes with the thud of the body hitting the floor, but there's no one around to hear it, not in here where it's just Jim and the stone, and not outside the soundproofed room. The bodyguards outside will have to go too, but with this in hand Jim doesn't quite care. He's run out of time for consequences.

 

-

 

Jim, as silently as he can, gets under the covers and slots himself into Mycroft’s side. He doesn’t think about how he will have to cope once Mycroft is out of his life, nor what sort of world he might wake up in tomorrow. If this is truly the last night, Jim just wants to be beside him and  _ be _ . 

 

Mycroft shifts, rousing just barely, and Jim’s arms wrap around him. Jim whispers “I love you” once aloud and a hundred times more in his head. Then Mycroft turns and tucks his face into Jim’s shoulder and says, so softly JIm wonders if he’s imagining it,

 

“I love you too.”

 

Jim doesn’t want to fall asleep, if this is truly the last time. But it doesn’t matter what Jim wants, because sleep comes soon, dragging him under.

 

-

  
  


-

  
  


-

  
  
  
  


-

 

Jim Moriarty wakes up two minutes before his alarm goes off, and blinks blearily as he gropes blindly for the phone on his nightstand.

 

He swipes at it a good three or four times before he manages to disable the alarm, and then stares bemused at the time for a few moments. 

 

Oh, right. He’s in London.

 

He forgets, sometimes, what city he’s in what with all the….changing he does. And no, he’s not Jim today, he’s Richard. 

 

Richard Brook, a teller at a bank. A soft-spoken, good humored but completely forgettable employee who is about to commit a massive fuck up at work today.

 

-

 

Jim, “Richard,” gives Carol a goofy grin from the window two over as she heads away from her booth to grab copies of forms the customer swore they’d filled out before handing over copies of completely different forms. Carol rolls her eyes.

 

Richard’s about to say something cheesy in an attempt to make her laugh when he hears the sound of a gun cock, and freezes.

 

Slowly, he turns forward in his seat, and comes face to face with a menacing firearm, which he follows with his eyes up to a leather-gloved hand, leather-jacketed arm, and masked face.

 

It’s a bank robbery.

 

-

 

It’s not a bank robbery, it’s a heist. 

 

The location is home to the prototype of a very secure vault that this botched robbery will allow Jim to not only scan and steal but rehearse a job in real time. The tapes will prove invaluable to his crew, and not only help Jim pinpoint what changes the security company will make to the vault system, but help Jim influence the changes they will make based on this mock-robbery.

 

Jim himself gets taken down to the station to give a witness’s statement, which is not unexpected, and helps him glean how much law enforcement has caught on.

 

To his mild surprise, they’ve caught on quite a bit, and Jim finds himself being given a polygraph test before he’s to give his statement.

 

“What do the jewelry store breaking-and-entering, the museum vandalism case, and this have in common?” a low, quick baritone asks.

 

“Nothing!” comes a brisker, more local accent. “The cases were completely unrelated!”

 

“Wrong!” the first voice reprimands, mocking. “The security involved each time was experimental. And the same company was involved in the security each time. I’m telling you, Lestrade, something very valuable is going to be stolen soon, and it will be by the same thief who orchestrated all three of these cases.”

 

“What, an inside job at the security firm?”

 

A scoff. “No, of course not. Haven’t you been listening?”

 

-

 

When Mycroft steps into New Scotland Yard, no one even glances at him. But when he makes his way to the back of the building and the interrogation rooms, no one comes between him and his destination either.

 

He greets the DI, assistant in tow, and send the man ahead to let his brother (the  _ only consulting detective in the world _ , as he calls himself) that he will no longer be pursuing this case.

 

Mycroft is greeted with a sharp glare as he enters the office.

 

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Sherlock demands. “God, Mycroft, do you always have to take the best bits for yourself! You are  _ so _ greedy.”

 

“Sherlock, the robber’s targets were some safes belonging to foreign diplomats. Interpol’s taken over the case,” the DI explains, concealing his own grumbling.

 

“ _ Interpol _ ,” Sherlock mocks. “Mycroft  _ is _ Interpol.”

 

Mycroft ignores the jibes and conversation around his position, and addresses the DI.

 

“I’d like to see the witness you’ve brought in,” he says. They both look surprised.

 

“Um. Sure, he’s being given a polygraph like you asked, but really he’s just one of the bank workers, had a gun held to him but not that long, not longer than the others, really, and—”

 

“I’ll know once I see him,” Mycroft says.

 

-

 

Jim waits, and eventually a boring man with a beard enters the room to administer the polygraph. It’s a standard set of questions that indicates, if anything, that the police aren’t sold on suspecting him of what that not-a-detective Baritone was suggesting. 

 

All of which, of course, had been completely accurate. 

 

They even keep the door of the little interrogation room open, under some pretense to assure him this is not an interrogation. 

 

For the most part, the hallway is quiet, but five questions in a pair of footsteps approach, one belonging to a man, and another a shorter woman in heels. Jim of course glances out the door to catch a glimpse of them passing—then freezes, as they come into view.

 

He briefly makes eye contact with the man (tall, dark auburn hair, law enforcement, local?), but the woman doesn’t even look up from her cell phone. 

 

It’s only a brief moment, but Jim knows if he wants to survive now, he needs to change all his plans.

 

-

 

Mycroft purses his lips and watches through the one-way glass. Sherlock behind him is silent, and no doubt coming up with all kinds of theories Mycroft’s already seen but has yet to be able to explain.

 

The DI beside him gives him a funny look.

 

“You two know each other?”

 

“Not that I know of,” Mycroft replies, punctuating each word, as if trying to inject false levity into the situation.

 

“Funny,” the DI replies. “Because he’d been all normal, normal tests. And then the moment he saw you—heartbeat went through the roof.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ended up going differently than expected lol. Despite how long I'd been thinking about it before I wrote it, it turned out to be something else anyway. I may add deleted scenes


End file.
